The Apothecary, a blog about health care and entitlement reform, is edited by Avik Roy, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a former health-care policy adviser to Mitt Romney. Avik also writes a weekly column on politics and policy for National Review.
The other contributors to The Apothecary are: Josh Archambault, Director of Health Care Policy at the Pioneer Institute in Boston; Robert Book of the American Action Forum; Chris Conover, Research Scholar in the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University and an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Nicole Fisher of the University of North Carolina; John R. Graham of the Advanced Medical Technology Association; and Jeet Guram of Harvard Medical School.

Why The Obamacare Data Hub Will Lead To Identity Theft

US President Barack Obama speaks during a press conference November 14, 2012 in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

My co-blogger Avik Roy has written an excellent explanation of the privacy and security problems with the ACA “data hub,” along with a summary of the specific laws and regulations that the administration is likely to have to circumvent or ignore to get the exchanges up and running on schedule by October 1. Emily Egan has produced a graph of six key milestone deadlines have either already been missed or pushed back. The final certification is now scheduled for Monday, September 30 – the day before the exchanges are supposed to open for business on October 1.

All I have to add to that excellent discussion is what might be called a “game theory” analysis of why the administration is likely to, as Chris Holt puts it, “push forward with an on time opening even without a properly secured Hub – putting at risk the personal information of millions of Americans.”

Consider the following: If the exchanges fail to open as promised on October 1, it will be a major embarrassment for the Obama administration, possibly with significant political consequences. After a year and a half of pushing back deadlines, delaying major components of the law, and issuing “waivers” over and over again – but all the while promising that this component will be ready on time, failing to open on time will make it look like the entire health reform effort is just a charade.

On the other hand, if the system is not secure and they open it anyway, what is the cost? To the administration, very little. Although it is very likely that privacy will be violated and identities stolen, it won’t be definite, it won’t happen on Day 1, it won’t happen to everybody, and it won’t be publicly known – or even traceable to the data hub – for some time. By that point, the administration will have taken credit for opening the exchanges on schedule, and the news cycle will have moved on to other issues.

In other words, it will be a disaster – but for randomly selected, mostly non-famous Americans, rather than for the administration. For the administration, it will be a mere inconvenience, occurring at an unspecified time in the future (perhaps even after the current President leaves office).

The only question left is how the administration would go ahead with opening the system without a proper security certification. The answer is, they will just do it. Either the President will issue a “waiver” of the security requirement, as he has done with so many other requirements of the law, or the person with the authority to determine whether the system meets the requirements will be pressured to certify it regardless.

While constantly issuing “waivers” of federal law appears to be an innovation of this administration, certifying things because they “need” to be certified, rather than deserve to be, is not unusual in the federal government. Many years ago, I was asked to certify a system in a different part of the federal government that clearly did not meet its requirements. Even the people asking me to certify it acknowledged that it didn’t meet the requirements. When I pushed back, saying that I was uncomfortable writing a report that wasn’t true, I was told I had to certify it anyway, because they didn’t have the budget to fix it, they wanted to replace it anyway, and if it weren’t certified it wouldn’t be fixed anyway, so would I just please make life easy for them. I didn’t certify it, and got the impression that I was the first person they’d ever seen who actually cared whether the system met the requirements. What did they do? The folks in charge just ignored the requirement that the system be certified.

Fortunately, that other system didn’t involve the security of any private information. With the Obamacare data hub, we won’t be so lucky.

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The American People lack absolutely, the ability to turn anything around in America. Being a bible believing nation, who’s spiritual belief system is that we the people are bad, arbitrary laws, & habitual welfare are our guideposts, we will continue to need support from despotism of all varieties.

Written law is obsolete. The bible is literally turning everything to waste. We continue to believe that we have the power to improve, while we lack absolutely the ability to rise above any foul result of our own ineptitudes.

We will listen invariable to the same people who led us here. We will continue to blame the other side. Liberty in America will rise again never. & why never? Because written law will lead us here. Until we embrace natural law after we have declared written law & the bible arbitrary, obsolete, destructive & insane, nothing on earth will improve.

Humankind is suffering from the absolute inability to evolve away from it’s uncivilized history. The spontaneous perfection of sentient beings under natures’ laws alone is as immutable as natures’ laws themselves. But humankind having supressed nature, truth & science for so long with lies, that there is no a great chasm between us & our own advance in an upward direction. It is actually unbelievably sad to watch mankind sink lower & lower, & know that that which they cling to in fear, is the very thing that destroyed them.

These stories are all across the internet about how bad America is. How to solve anything no where. Because the solution is like a step into a whole new way of life, so different, so pure, so unlike what we are so used to that it is a step that we are not now likely to be able to take. & in remaining where we are, we inch lower & lower everywhere at every moment.

No problem if someone gets hacked they white house is out of any lawsuit they have a disclaimer on the site and they don’t care anyway they just want to chalk it up as a success even though it will be years and years of painful job loses and people having coverage but not able to pay the deductible this is a disgrace that must be held over democrats during the next 10 elections they all voted for it no matter what they say during the 2014 mid terms they still voted for it and will back it 100 percent after the elections only shying away from it close to 2016 again .